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June 02, 2005
Man, sometimes Sullivan just sucks it right out of me.
Let me rephrase that.
There was a time, when I was just starting out with the site, that getting an E - mail of the Day on Sullivan's site was just a tick or two below an Instalanche. It didn't generate any traffic, but it was a brush with a Big Dog. I'd been noticed. Even got an e - mail back.
Then, as the Bush - Sullivan honeymoon began to fade, and finally exploded into anguished betrayal and increasingly obvious backpedalling, I grew tired of Sullivan's blue and white piano, which apparently only has a GAY key and a CATHOLIC key on it, plus three expression pedals for OFFENDED, LOUDER, and (just for good measure) GAY.
Which is fine, his site, his rules, a bit light in the loafers myself, et cetera and so forth. It has been interesting to watch his transformation from "Bush supporter" to "cautious optimist" to "bitter, used political tool." To read his site today, you'd never know he ever had a kind word to say about the Dubster, his adminstration, or their handling of the war effort. All of which, Sullivan maintains, is due to a variety of factors - - Bush's weird brand of big spending, big government Republicanism, lack of accountability in his administration, the repeated rewarding of loyalty over competence. But I'd be willing to bet that much of that would get more of a pass if, say, George had come out solidly against the FMA, or maybe repudiated James Dobson's brand of Homosexuals Want Your Children Christianity.
Of course I can't prove that, because one of the popsicle sticks on my rubber - band powered alternate - universe slipstream device broke. But I do wish that Andy would just admit that, his intelligence and sophistication notwithstanding, the overwhelming fact of his life and politics is that he's gay as a treeful of parrots. Gay, gay, gay! A big ol' buggerin' bear, he is. It is the axiom that underlies all of his thinking. He tried to pretend otherwise after 9/11, but by gum Dubya wouldn't let him.
And so, I don't read him much anymore, which isn't so much an example of cocooning as it is of my general boredom with the whole Blogosphere Thing. Maybe I need to get out more. Virtually, that is. Sullivan isn't even telling me anything that I don't know or particularly disagree with. I'm just tired. Of. Hearing. It.
I'm also tired of wriggling on an epistemological spit turned by the billion handed beast of Information. Goddammit, I don't know what's going on in Guantanamo. And unless you're locked up there or guarding someone who is, neither do you. There's so much manure being flung in all directions, masquerading as news, that it's impossible to delve into that and many other issues without stinking. I'm tired of stinking. I want to ride my bike and eat Doritos.
That should about do it for Overwrought Metaphor Corner. Join us next time, when Pat Buchanan will play a medly of Pet Shop Boys hits on Andrew Sullivan's BIG GAY PIANO.
June 03, 2005
Idle Brains
 Another day ending, fading out into gray clouds and a light misty rain which the infant sunflowers in the planter on the deck appreciate. Soon I will transplant them to the side of the house, so they can grow tall and look impressive in that country sort of way.
It's good to finally have something to do again. I spent my five weeks off just sort of bumbling around, not doing much, and not looking for work because I am a super - fantastic genius to whom work comes on its own. So now I've got a gig, with deadlines and deliverables and all of that grown - up professional - style stuff which has given me something to fight off the anxious - bored heebie - jeebies that I was overcome by during the past four years or so, when my last gig ran out of things to do but kept paying me. Some might think that's a fine situation. Trust me, it's not, especially if you're a super - fantastic genius. Idle brains are the devil's testicles.
So, the weekend rolls in, welcome! Some errands: I get to visit Johannes to get a new cassette for the Street Machine, and I get a haircut to return me to stunning handsomitude. I'm so excited I can barely stand up.
And now: a comic for you. It might be the first in a series. It might not. That's what's so wonderful about Astonished Head: you never know what you're going to get. If anything!
June 06, 2005
Idle Brains
Ha - haa!
More comic for you.
June 08, 2005
THIS MUST NOT BE ALLOWED.
Contact Governor Pataki here:
Governor George E. Pataki
State Capitol
Albany, NY 12224
A letter is good. A phone call is better: 518 - 474 - 8390
An e - mail will do: write here.
Contact Mayor Bloomberg here:
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
City Hall
New York, NY 10007
212 - 639 - 9675
E - mail
And, if you want the International Freedom Center's take, read their brochure. And, if'n you don't like it, call IFC President and COO Richard Tofel at 212 - 219 - 9401 ext. 135.
[Via Mr. Green.]
[And, of course, see the ubiquitous Mr. Reynolds for links to other blog - style people more well - known and less lazy than I writing 'bout this. Follow them!
'Specially the big ol' linkage at Sisu]
Idle Brains
June 09, 2005
Richard Tofel, President and COO of the International Freedom Center, defends his organization's plans for the World Trade Center site in today's WSJ. I agree with Mr. Jarvis: there's a lot of fluff, and little substance, surrounding Mr. Tofel's transparent use of quotes from the President.
But here's something else. How does this:
Then there will be the Memorial Center, a museum devoted to the events of September 11 itself, with exhibit space roughly equal in size to that at the International Freedom Center.
... square with what Ms. Burlingame wrote yesterday?
While the IFC is getting 300,000 square feet of space to teach us how to think about liberty, the actual Memorial Center on the opposite corner of the site will get a meager 50,000 square feet to exhibit its 9/11 artifacts, all out of sight and underground.
Either someone has a unique definition of "equal," or someone is fudging numbers.
Which is it? Some poking around reveals this comment, dated May 25, from a site offering bits of news related to 9/11 memorials:
The Center takes up virtually every square inch of available space on the northeast corner of the site literally bumping up against the memorial and separated only by a row of trees. The sketches show it dominating the block and even dwarfing the the train station.
The emphasis on placing a drawing center on the spot adds insult to injury. We have always thought that the mistakes at Ground Zero arose by the handing off of the design plan to artists rather than the logical engineers and historians. Adding salt to the wound is that not only is an art gallery planned at the site but also a location for an organization that doesn’t even exist yet except on paper.
So in essence the Freedom Center in a nutshell exhibits everything that’s wrong about the current plan: it’s too big, it’s built for an organization that doesn’t exist and it celebrates something that has nothing to do with what happened on 911. It’s the ultimate triumph for a plan designed by artists rather than engineers and historians.
The IFC does have a website now, but there's nothing about the Center's square footage there. Oddly enough, I couldn't locate a single mention of the IFC on the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation's site.
However, I did discover that the LMDC has a Mission Statement, like all good corporations.
MEMORIAL MISSION STATEMENT FOR THE WORLD TRADE CENTER SITE
- REMEMBER AND HONOR THE THOUSANDS OF INNOCENT MEN, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN MURDERED BY TERRORISTS IN THE HORRIFIC ATTACKS OF FEBRUARY 26, 1993 AND SEPTEMBER 11, 2001.
- RESPECT THIS PLACE MADE SACRED THROUGH TRAGIC LOSS.
- RECOGNIZE THE ENDURANCE OF THOSE WHO SURVIVED, THE COURAGE OF THOSE WHO RISKED THEIR LIVES TO SAVE OTHERS, AND THE COMPASSION OF ALL WHO SUPPORTED US IN OUR DARKEST HOURS.
- MAY THE LIVES REMEMBERED, THE DEEDS RECOGNIZED, AND THE SPIRIT REAWAKENED BE ETERNAL BEACONS, WHICH REAFFIRM RESPECT FOR LIFE, STRENGTHEN OUR RESOLVE TO PRESERVE FREEDOM, AND INSPIRE AN END TO HATRED, IGNORANCE AND INTOLERANCE.
Humanity has produced manifold conceptions of "sacred" over the millennia. But they all share the idea that a sacred space - - whether it's the Ark behind the curtain or the entire earth - - is occupied by, or is in and of itself, something numinous. There's no room room for anything else. That's one of the essential differences between the sacred and the profane: whatever is sacred takes up all of the space it is given, so that to cross the boundary and enter into its presence one must also become sacred. Hence, the purification rituals undertaken by the Israelite priests who entered the Holy of Holies, or the pantheistic insistence that everything is sacred.
Everthing in the LMDC's Mission Statement is focused on the numinous presence of those who died and those who survived... right up until the end: AND INSPIRE AN END TO HATRED, IGNORANCE AND INTOLERANCE. Did the dead hate? Were they ignorant, or intolerant? Maybe some of them were, in life, but not now, in sacred death.
But we know who hated, who was ignorant, and who was intolerant, don't we? That's right: the psychopathic Jihadists who killed 3,000 people on that clear September morning.
By injecting the characteristics of the murderers into what is supposed to be a place sacred to the memory of the murdered, the IFC and the LMDC have injected profanity into a sacred space.
Ultimately, the square footage doesn't matter. Even a square inch of the IFC's pedantic exhibit would offend in that place.
There is no room for it there. None at all.
June 10, 2005
I may have reached some sort of geek apotheosis here. I can now connect wirelessly to the Internet in four ways. 802.11b and 802.11g of course, not so geeky. But now I've got one of these, to go with this. So I can connect via cellular modem at 14.4 kBps... eh. But: I also get wireless broadband, thanks to Verizon's EV - DO infrastructure. And even though I'm 65 miles away from New York City, I still get just a smidgen of the broadband signal. It's about 3.5 times slower than my in - house WAP, but the fact that I can get the broadband signal here probably means I'll have decent throughput on the train, which will only improve as I approach the city.
This should make my transformation into Mobile Professional Consultant Guy complete. The aluminum briefcase was only the beginning.
I can now work anywhere between here and New York, doing exactly the same work I would at a desk in an office or at home. That means more billable time while in transit, less time working at home, and techno - frazookery. For those who don't know, that's the quality of being tech - savvy enough to impress those who pay you, while maintaining humility before those who are truly skilled.
The first modem I ever bought was a 2400 baud PC card modem for my second laptop, back in 1993 or so. Now, I can get better - than - DSL speeds mashed into the same form factor with a bulbous antenna - bearing bit on the end. That's progress, baby! I adore owning things that They Said Would Come (still waiting for flying car, jet pack, tasty Soylent Green, etc. and so on). My very first laptop had a 20MB hard drive and cost $3,000; now I've got 1GB in a pendant smaller than my thumb that I bought for less than $60 off ebay from a guy out in the Midwest somewhere.
Frazookery. Live it.
June 12, 2005
Carblogging.
Not because I have anything to say.
Because I can.
 See now, this here is one of the reasons why it's good to live out towards the country side of things. We picked these about five minutes from our house, on a hillside overlooking the valley, with humid mist rising from the forests on the other side.
Unlike yesterday, with its crotch - rotting still humidity, the air was moving today, and spending half an hour in a field in the middle of the afternoon was pleasant and rewarding rather than apalling and sticky. Not bad for thirty minutes' work, not bad at all. Big, red, juicy monsters they are, too:
In the winter it's sometimes difficult to remember why we moved here. But in late spring the berry seasons happen (strawberries, then raspberries and blackberries), then come the summer peaches and plums, with apples following in autumn. Of all of them, I like the plums best: they're the elongated Italian variety, and they grow so enthusiastically that the trees look like they're bearing giant, weighty clusters of grapes. And yet: there's nothing quite like biting into a strawberry that you've just picked, still warm from the sun. Apples I can take or leave, although they do make for good cobbler.
Now, I'm sitting in the living room enjoying the new ceiling fan I installed this afternoon (with the requisite cursing and deployment of savage hammers), a replacement for the one that's been begging for death since last August. Pea's on the couch, drawing submarines and timebombs.
There's probably at least half a dozen things I should be doing.
But I'm going to go stuff another strawberry in my face instead.
June 13, 2005
 Speaking of the adoration of things They Said Would Come: holographic memory cards are here! Almost. At $1 for a credit - card sized 30GB storage card (it's even transparent, like a lucite Star Trek prop!), and $1,800 for the reader device, these things are nearly within reach of fiscally irresponsible people such as myself who would want to figure out some way of storing and streaming entertainment content off of them. For comparison, my Orb drive takes 2.2GB cartridges that can be had for $16 off eBay, but listed for $60 - $100 when cutting - edge.
Can unplugging the mind of a mad computer be far behind? I say no. Bring on the demented AI!
[Via Gizmodo]
On the one hand, I must steadfastly maintain that I don't really know what's going on in Gitmo and, frankly, I'm still not at all sure I should know, being neither a) in the military or b) an inmate. The Woodsteinian ideal of total transparency may not be something that ought to be unconditionally applied to the military in time of war (and if you're one of those folks who thinks that if enough people just grasped the horror we'd never have any war anymore ever, you'll disagree. So embrace that. We'll have coffee).
On the other, I'd like this to be the basic truth of it.
Maybe after we've won the war we can have a PBS Frontline special with a bunch of redacted documents and smuggled video, narrated by That Guy Who Does Frontline... you know, the one they occasionally hire to do fictional documentaries, to lend them that extra bit of realism. Yeah, that guy. You know who I mean.
What I appreciate about Lileks' latest that he takes the "horrors" described as fact by Time and holds them up to what is, basically, an adult standard. Unless the dead - tree version of this cover story ends with "... and then, after eight months of captivity, Detainee 063 was hog - tied, wrapped in prosciutto, and had his head sawn off by a Rabbi," I quite simply could care less.
Similarly, over at boingboing (which used to actually be a "directory of wonderful things," but is now more of a "directory of random tech and arty stuff, interspersed with advertisements for Cory Doctorow's latest book and hefty amounts of insufficiently skeptical political babble"), Xeni Jardin wants us to know that some lawyers say that "Some Gitmo detainees are minors." Just out enjoying their youth, and then they got swept up by the American war machine.
Actually, according to the NYT article, six minors - - six! - - were swept up by the Pakistani military machine.
In addition to being hung by his wrists for hours and possibly having a burning cigarette applied to his arm (I saw The Breakfast Club so I know that's abuse), detainee M.C. describes
... being shackled close to the floor in an interrogation room for hours with music blaring and lights in his face. He also said he was shown a room with pictures of naked women and adult videos and told he could have access if he cooperated. His description fits the account of former guards who described such a room and said it was nicknamed "the love shack."
Given the egregious quality of some of the gonzo porn America produces these days, I can see how this could be abusive.
Now, the problem here seems to be not only that M.C. was tortured, but that he was underage. However,
The dispute is clouded by two issues: military authorities define a juvenile as someone younger than 16 years of age, not 18, as do most human rights groups. Further, the ages of the detainees brought to Guantánamo as enemy combatants cannot be determined with certainty, leaving officials to make estimates.
"They don't come with birth certificates," said Col. Brad K. Blackner, the chief public affairs officer at the detention camp. Col. David McWilliams, the chief spokesman for the United States Southern Command in Miami, which runs the prison operation, said that the authorities were fairly confident of their estimates. "We used bone scans in some cases and age was determined by medical evidence as best we could," he said.
Minority, it seems to me, is more a function of what you do and where you live than chronological age. Frankly, I have much more of a problem with this:
The lawyer, Clive A. Stafford Smith, of London, said in an interview that the prisoner, who is now 18 and is identified by the initials M.C. in public documents, told him in a recent interview at Guantánamo that he was seized by local authorities in Pakistan about Oct. 21, 2001, a few months shy of his 15th birthday, and taken to Guantánamo at the beginning of 2002.
Why are we keeping folks locked up in an American military installation based on the say - so of Pakistani beat police? For all we know, the kid got caught alone with his well - connected neighbor's daughter.
How many Gitmo inmates are there solely because they were sent to us by other countries? This doesn't strike me as even slightly worth the political and public relations fallout.
[Ten Fingers 6 Strings gives this more thought than I did.]
Blogging while the power's out. Or, at least, while the power is so diminished that while the two old ceiling fans will spin v e r r y s l o w l y, the new one won't spin at all, and the entertainment appliances won't entertain me.
Except for the laptop. Which rocks. Not only am I online, I've got all episodes of The Tick cartoon to watch, because BitTorrent also rocks. So freakin' there.
In about another thirty seconds, it's going to get INTOLERABLY HOT inside. That's when the looting starts. Me, I'm hitting the Radio Shack up the street. But before I do that, I'm going out to the deck.
Which brings to my sweaty mind something that's always bugged the hell out of me.
For the past several years, we in the general New York metro area and beyond have enjoyed summer blackouts - - collapses of our local power infrastructure. There was the big one in 2003, but anyone who has lived in New York knows that every summer there's one hapless neighborhood after another that supplies the local news with night - time footage of families camping on stoops and sidewalks because the Con Edison transformers have exploded again. Just last week it was 14,000 "customers" on Long Island.
Yet, if you go shopping in Manhattan, you will invariably pass by retail establishments with their doors wide open, blasting icy cold air onto you as you pass by. The goal, of course, is to get you to come in and buy $120 pairs of pre - worn acid - washed jeans.
I'm no physicist. But I do know that if you're cranking your heat exchanger up to cool a patch of sidewalk on a 95 - degree day in New York, you're using up much more energy than you would if, say, you had your damn doors closed. In fact, you're being downright profligate.
Now, I'm all for doing whatever you damn well please with your own money and your own infrastructure. But when your desire to sell your crap directly impacts the broccoli in my refrigerator, I get pissed off. You want to entice passers - by with icy - cool air - conditioning, you either invent your own inexhaustible power supply, generate your own electricity, or pony up for infrastructure improvements. Until then, keep your doors closed, and suffer the consequences of trying to sell items that no person in their right mind is thinking of on a day with a 101 - degree heat index.
Now. I'm fixing to enjoy this here collapse of civilization. Gonna get my gun and get me some 'sumer 'lectronics, you betcha!
June 14, 2005
Idle Brains
June 15, 2005
Idle Brains
June 17, 2005
OK, so this was going to be my "posting from the train because I can" post, but I was punished for my smugitude by an SMTP relay issue with my wireless broadband connection, and by the time I identified the issue and decided to call for tech support I was off the train, and then I spent an hour on the cellphone with a patient Verizon Wireless data support guy, who ended up schooling me in troubleshooting, narrowing it down to a problem with Eudora, and then it looked like I was going to have to use the hated Microsoft Outlook, but then I solved the problem with Eurdora, and then I started this entry right here, but a giant purple caffeinated elephant came by and smashed up the office, and I had to rappel down the side of the building and escape by autogyro into the wilds of North Jersey.
So I'm a bit busy, y'see. I'll post from the zeppelin once I'm aboard!
June 19, 2005
So... is this the Gitmo of our times?
It's time to compare and contrast! I love doing that. We'll use Time magazine's exclusive and another NYT article as our other other sources.
Finally, the marines at Karabila found a book, along with the shackled and battered Iraqis: "the 2005 First Edition of 'The Principles of Jihadist Philosophy,' by Abdel Rahman al - Ali. Its chapters included 'How to Select the Best Hostage,' and 'The Legitimacy of Cutting the Infidels' Heads.'
As we know, the only book found in the cells of Guantanamo is the Koran.
Time magazine and the New York Times report. I make a handy chart. You decide.
June 20, 2005
Idle Brains
Apropos nothing in particular, may I just express my sincere wish that Mohammad Atta and the rest of the 9/11 hijackers are currently taking turns in Hell being anally violated by Ch'iuk - shi, the horny - phallused pig - demon of the ancient Asian peoples; and that in the course of this violation they are stretched lambskin - thin over said horned phallus, and are then in turn used as sensation - enhancing condoms by Ch'iuk - shi as he seeks further infernal pleasure with Kul'd' - ako, also called "She of the Infinitely Razored Vagina;" and that, when Ch'iuk - shi's acidic issue has seared its way through their innards and burst through their eyesockets, each of them is draped on a barbed - wire rack over a pit of bubbling molten sulphur, there to reconstitute for the pig - demon's pleasure; and that Ch'iuk - shi is ready to go again every hour, on the hour, except for between noon and one, when he enjoys a parmesan sandwich made from sausage meats stuffed into the flayed skins of the hijackers who have finished their turn on the drying rack and are awaiting Ch'iuk - shi's spiked member up their backsides.
This is my wish for this day.
And maybe a nice sausage parmesan sandwich for myself.
Without the hijacker - skin, of course. That stuff is nasty.
June 21, 2005
June 22, 2005
Idle Brains
June 24, 2005
Every so often I must rage against a particularly stupid television advertisement:
Yeah, I want to go to a bar that serves nothing but amaretto. I should knock that ice cube out of your whore's mouth and kill you where you stand.
My god. This has been going on for over three years.
[Via What Have I Done?]
Idle Brains
June 29, 2005
Idle Brains
I just love bulleted lists! I circulate them with irresponsible abandon.
There's a really good one here, all about how Iraq Has Nothing To Do With 9/11, or, as I like to call it, Bullets At The Rhetorical Heads Of The Strategically - Challenged:
What does the “nothing whatsoever” crowd have to say about:
- Ahmed Hikmat Shakir - - the Iraqi Intelligence operative who facilitated a 9/11 hijacker into Malaysia and was in attendance at the Kuala Lampur meeting with two of the hijackers, and other conspirators, at what is roundly acknowledged to be the initial 9/11 planning session in January 2000? Who was arrested after the 9/11 attacks in possession of contact information for several known terrorists? Who managed to make his way out of Jordanian custody over our objections after the 9/11 attacks because of special pleading by Saddam’s regime?
- Saddam's intelligence agency's efforts to recruit jihadists to bomb Radio Free Europe in Prague in the late 1990's?
- Mohammed Atta's unexplained visits to Prague in 2000, and his alleged visit there in April 2001 which - - notwithstanding the 9/11 Commission's dismissal of it (based on interviewing exactly zero relevant witnesses) - - the Czechs have not retracted?
- The Clinton Justice Department's allegation in a 1998 indictment (two months before the embassy bombings) against bin Laden, to wit: In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.
- Seized Iraq Intelligence Service records indicating that Saddam's henchmen regarded bin Laden as an asset as early as 1992?
- Saddam's hosting of al Qaeda No. 2, Ayman Zawahiri beginning in the early 1990’s, and reports of a large payment of money to Zawahiri in 1998?
- Saddam’s ten years of harboring of 1993 World Trade Center bomber Abdul Rahman Yasin?
- Iraqi Intelligence Service operatives being dispatched to meet with bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1998 (the year of bin Laden’s fatwa demanding the killing of all Americans, as well as the embassy bombings)?
- Saddam’s official press lionizing bin Laden as “an Arab and Islamic hero” following the 1998 embassy bombing attacks?
- The continued insistence of high - ranking Clinton administration officials to the 9/11 Commission that the 1998 retaliatory strikes (after the embassy bombings) against a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory were justified because the factory was a chemical weapons hub tied to Iraq and bin Laden?
- Top Clinton administration counterterrorism official Richard Clarke’s assertions, based on intelligence reports in 1999, that Saddam had offered bin Laden asylum after the embassy bombings, and Clarke’s memo to then - National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, advising him not to fly U - 2 missions against bin Laden in Afghanistan because he might be tipped off by Pakistani Intelligence, and “[a]rmed with that knowledge, old wily Usama will likely boogie to Baghdad”? (See 9/11 Commission Final Report, p. 134 & n.135.)
- Terror master Abu Musab Zarqawi's choice to boogie to Baghdad of all places when he needed surgery after fighting American forces in Afghanistan in 2001?
- Saddam's Intelligence Service running a training camp at Salman Pak, were terrorists were instructed in tactics for assassination, kidnapping and hijacking?
- Former CIA Director George Tenet’s October 7, 2002 letter to Congress, which asserted: Our understanding of the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda is evolving and is based on sources of varying reliability. Some of the information we have received comes from detainees, including some of high rank.
- We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda going back a decade.
- Credible information indicates that Iraq and Al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression.
- Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of Al Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad.
- We have credible reporting that Al Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to Al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs.
- Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians coupled with growing indications of relationship with Al Qaeda suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase, even absent U.S. military action.
[Via Mr. Lileks]
I'm sure that there are some debatable bullets in there - - but, I'm a blogger! My standards are just not up to the level of professionals like Rather, Jordan, and Erwin. I suck.
That said, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and has a mustache like a duck, perhaps we should chase it into a hole, shoot its sons, and photograph it in its underwear.
At the very least, we should maybe change the meme to: Iraq was behind the World Trade Center attack!
[More on bullets at Fried Green al - Qaedas. And I mean, just on bullets... there are really no other points of commonality between this post and that one. I choose to overlook that sly bit about the implied truth of bullets because, as I said on the 30th (which is tomorrow from the standpoint of the original date on this post, but two days ago from the standpoint of this bracketed update right here... the mind boggles): I'm a lazy, lazy man.]
June 30, 2005
Sometimes, little things make a day, you know, good - ish. At the moment I'm sitting in the Jersey City Cosi sandwich bar with my customary iced coffee and blueberry muffin, and one of the counter lasses just up and gave me a refill for no particular reason - - "Just for you," she said. "I like you." Meant in a regular - customer sort of liking way.
Still, that's a nice thing. Now I'll have way too much coffee, and will be energetic, which might offset the last time I was on the client site, which was a blur of hung - overness and vague nausea. Bad.
Not today, though. Today: good.
By the way - - this close to the city? 480 kbps down, 111 kpbs up. Through the very aether, I tell you!
This, if true, is a pristine example of suckitude.
[Via Fark.]
UPDATE:
One of the joys of blogging is that the distributed nature of the community allows me to be very, very lazy.
As I knew he would, tsunami relief - tracker extraordinaire Chuck Simmons at You Big Mouth, You! provides some perspective on this:
Look through the information at the cites. About half the pledged aid is dedicated to reconstruction efforts over the next 3 - 5 years. Other portions are, in reality, loans and loan guarantees. What it all boils down to is that this group is moaning about not receiving money now, to be "spent" in five years. Kinda like giving your children their college fund when they enter ninth grade and expecting them to use it four years later for college. Yah, sher! You betcha!
And, of course, no where is it cited that the United States military spent over a quarter billion dollars through its support efforts in South Asia. $6 million per day for about 45 days.
With a chart, even! Those are my second favorite, right behind bulleted lists.
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